


Apartment 3S

by chimosa



Series: Apartment [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Domestic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:23:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2606684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chimosa/pseuds/chimosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There was a part of Will- a small, easily repressed part- that seethed.  </i>
</p><p>  <i>What had once been a veritable opera between them- displays of control and power, displays rendered in blood and broken flesh- had dwindled into these little domesticized shows of dominance.  Still, Will can recognize it for what it is: a power play.</i> </p><p>  <i>Will bought meat so Hannibal bought an apartment.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Apartment 3S

Will Graham hasn’t always spent his nights beside Hannibal Lecter.

During his first three weeks in apartment 1206, despite Hannibal’s nightly offer, Will stubbornly sleeps on the sofa, his arms curled tight across his chest. In the morning it’s a toss up what will wake him first: the sun as it cuts through the sheer-yet-stylish curtains or Sienna, staring intently into his face, whispering a mantra of “wake up wake up wake up,” like some demonic monk. 

Regardless of what eventually wakes him, the pain in Will’s neck is always the same. 

“Why don’t we get your father up, too?” Will asks Sienna that first morning, rubbing at his strained trapezius and eyeing the clock on the wall with it’s hour hand still hovering around five. “Wouldn’t that be fun?”

The look he receives is equal parts serious and considering. 

It is a wholly Lecter-ian expression. 

“The door’s closed,” Sienna answers simply, as if that is that.

They make small talk for a couple of hours, or rather Sienna talks as she jumps on the couch and Will throws in an uneasy “oh yeah?” every so often. When the door to Hannibal’s room snicks open at precisely seven o’clock, Will looks up to see the other man already dressed for the day. 

“Breakfast?” Hannibal offers solicitously, taking in his jumping daughter and Will’s barely awake slump with a blink. 

Breakfast is a ritual, Will finds, and one that he knows the steps for even if he’s never performed them quite this way before. Sienna has a step stool that she pulls up to the kitchen’s island while Hannibal lays out the chopping board, the knives, and a chrome mixing bowl.

Will finds himself stepping in to wash produce without having to be told.

“For breakfast we will have a protein scramble,” Hannibal announces and both Will and Sienna pause.

“Like the good old days?” Will asks warily as Sienna yells in exasperation: “I am _not_ eating _eggs_.”

“This will be a somewhat modified recipe,” Hannibal says to Will, smiling slyly, acknowledging that awful truth Will had come to suspect from their first shared meal together. 

“But I’m afraid it will contain eggs.” Hannibal hands a bell pepper and a startlingly sharp knife to Sienna. Despite her loud qualms about the prospect of eating eggs, she begins to slice the yellow pepper with an eagerness that makes the hair on Will’s neck prickle.

It’s disconcerting to see a knife- so sharp it easily slides through the pepper’s skin- between such small fingers. In the edges of his vision, Will can see Hannibal staring at him, wearing amusement as comfortably as a three piece suit, practically daring Will to comment. 

Will decides to be contrary and stays silent. 

When he cracks the eggs into the mixing bowl he can’t help but notice Sienna covering her eyes.

On their way to the playground, Will stops at a deli. Sienna frowns when he ushers her inside, but when he hands her the bagel with cream cheese he orders, the little girl gives him a delighted, toothy grin in return. 

It becomes the first of many clandestine breakfasts between the two of them.

***  
It takes three weeks.

The sofa is still uncomfortable, and even with his arms crossing his chest and the cashmere throw wrapped tight, the cold from the window still seeps in to where Will lays. 

Hannibal’s room is dark when Will steps in, his bare feet soundless. Even through the darkness he can see the other man watching as he steps closer to the bed. 

Wordlessly, Will slides between the sheets.

***

Sienna had been unusually quite during breakfast, but Will only realizes that three hours later as he watches her walk listless circles around the playground, an uneaten bagel still in its brown paper bag on the bench beside him. 

She hadn’t seemed upset when Hannibal had announced a few nights before that he had found a new apartment for them to live in, one within walking distance of Sienna’s Upper West Side school. Which should have been a sign in itself, Will realizes, as just about anything is likely to upset Sienna. 

“Would you like to go see it tomorrow?” Hannibal had asked, neatly dipping a spoon into a bowl of butternut squash soup. The vegan dish was a concession to Sienna, even though Hannibal still insisted she would eventually grow tired of her plant-based diet. Will was amused by their standoff, even as he did his part to educate Sienna on the evils of the meat industry whenever Hannibal was out of earshot.

Will, on the other hand, was willing to eat meat prepared by Hannibal Lecter so long as Will was the one buying it. 

Sienna had shaken her head as she tapped out an annoying rhythm against her soup bowl with her spoon. Will reached out, stilling her hand with his own.

“Will?”

There was a part of Will- a small, easily repressed part- that seethed. What had once been a veritable opera between them- displays of control and power, displays rendered in blood and broken flesh- had dwindled into these little domesticized shows of dominance. Still, Will can recognize it for what it is: a power play

Will bought meat so Hannibal bought an apartment.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he had said with a bland smile that Hannibal returned with one of his own.

None of them spoke of the impending move again, not until that morning, when their breakfast is interrupted three days later by the arrival of twelve movers and their army of cardboard boxes. 

Now Will can’t help but watch Sienna as she walks under the monkey bars with a sinking in his chest. 

Still, there’s nothing he can say to make it better. Hannibal will do what Hannibal will do and its up to the rest of them to navigate the chaotic waters of his whims. 

***  
Hannibal will do what Hannibal will do, but still Will throws away the Quik Packerz business card he finds carefully laid out in the middle of the dining table. 

It’s the only surface clear of the towers of boxes that fill apartment 3S, where the movers had unceremoniously dumped them after informing Hannibal that unpacking wasn’t _their_ job. 

Will and Hannibal stay up until three in the morning trying to turn the mess of boxes into something resembling a home, but its never ending. Even working in silence for hours there’s still more that needs to be done.

Will is breaking down an empty box to add to the growing pile of flattened cardboard boxes when Hannibal stops in front of him. He blinks when Hannibal takes the box cutter out of his hands and pulls him up until he is standing, their bodies pressed together. 

“Come,” Hannibal breathes warm air across Will’s cheek, which he then chases with his lips. “Let’s go to bed.”  
***

Will sleeps until seven thirty, and still surprisingly manages to wake up before Hannibal. It’s rare that he gets the chance to see the other man unguarded, and Will watches the gentle rise and fall of his chest, savors the moment for the rarity that it is.

He could kill Hannibal, he thinks. 

The box cutter somehow ended up on the night stand; it would be simple enough to slit his throat and watch him bleed out. He could grab Sienna and the two of them could make use of the counterfeit passports Will had made on a whim five weeks after that first night in Hannibal Lecter’s bed.

He could kill Hannibal, but he doesn’t. Instead he takes the box cutter and carefully places it on his pillow, where he knows Hannibal will see it when he wakes up.

The new apartment is exquisite: dark woods, old world fixtures and crown molding. It is everything that the painfully modern apartment 1206 _wasn’t_ and Will can see why Hannibal had chosen it. 

It reminds Will of a certain house in Baltimore, Maryland, and he is sure the similarities aren’t a coincidence. 

There is a rustling sound and Will realizes he isn’t the only one awake. 

“Sienna?” he calls, but he is met with silence. 

He holds himself still, waits, and there it is: that sound.

It’s either Sienna or rats, but Will is counting on the former. It takes a few moments but eventually he finds a tuft of blonde hair peaking out from the flaps of a cardboard box.

“Sienna?” 

He can hear the breath she takes in and holds. 

“You’re going to have to breathe, eventually.”

A beat of silence before her tiny voice drifts out from the box she is hiding in. “No I won’t.”

Will can’t help but smile at the familiar obstinance in her voice.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Go away.”

“Do you want to help me make pancakes?”

He waits, but she doesn’t respond. Will decides to leave her to it and heads to the kitchen.

Not a minute passes before Sienna follows, her hair a tangle of glinting blonde. Her dark eyes have equally dark circles under them and Will wonders how long she’s been awake.

“How are we s’pposed to make pancakes?” she asks, eyeing the boxes still cluttering the surprisingly small kitchen. 

It’s true, he remembers the kitchen as being more unpacked than it actually is in the light of day. Together they rummage through boxes until they unearth a bowl, a spatula, and a pan. 

The forks, on the other hand, are nowhere to be found.

“I found chopsticks,” Sienna calls.

“Well, it’s something.”

Flour, sugar, baking powder, and oil. It’s a good thing Will found this egg-less recipe for pancakes months ago, because that’s about all their pantry has in it. The measurements he throws into the bowl aren’t exact, but they look about right, and Will sets the bowl on the floor so that Sienna can stir it all together as she sits- her step stool lost to some box or another. 

He’s fiddling with the stove top when he hears a trembling inhale. Turning, he can see Sienna has gone motionless, her face crumpled and bright red, as silent tears fall from her eyes. 

“Sienna?” His heart is hammering, uncertain and worried. “Did you hurt yourself?”

She shakes her head and his concern only grows. He’s seen her cry plenty of times- loud, messy sobs that are a performance all their own- but he doesn’t know what to do with these silent tears that she is trying so hard to contain, tears that aren’t meant to be seen. 

“I- I don’t want to move,” she finally gasps and his chest tightens painfully at the pure, yawning sadness in the words. “We used to move a lot. I thought it was all different now.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Will says, crouching beside her so that he can place a hand on her shoulder. She turns, burying her face in his chest, and- like every time she reaches for his hand before crossing the street- he feels the contact like a brand.

“It _is_ different now,” he says, but what else can he say? 

That he was the reason she was uprooted so often? 

That every time she had to pack up- again and again- it was because Will was a hair’s breath away from capturing the serial murderer and monster she called father? 

There’s nothing he can say- nothing that a six year old should have to hear- so he holds her tight and promises things he knows aren’t his to promise, through a throat tight with bitterness and resentment at the man that brought them together.

He can see this moment for what is it and it has Hannibal Lecter’s manipulative fingerprints all over it. Hannibal Lecter, who isn’t above breaking the heart of his own daughter if it binds Will to him for another day. 

“It’s going to be okay,” he lies, and hates himself for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! 
> 
> Not that Apartment 1206 _needed_ a follow up, but it was a nice distraction from the guilt I feel at procrastinating from writing Sawdust ;-)


End file.
